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Lynn Eleanor Kohlman (1946-2008)/Obituaries
Lynn Kohlman, a former fashion model and photographer who kept a part-time residence in Springs for the past 25 years, died of brain cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan on Sept. 14. She was 62. Her five years with breast and brain cancer were part of the inspiration for Donna Karan to establish the Urban Zen Foundation. Ms. Karen was a close friend and former business associate of Ms. Kohlman's. In a pictorial autobiography, "Lynn Front to Back," published in 2005, Colleen Saidman and Rodney Yee, co-owners of Yoga Shanti in Sag Harbor, were featured prominently, along with Ms. Karan, who this year opened a store in Sag Harbor to support her foundation. According to Ms. Kohlman's husband, Mark Obenhaus, Ms. Kohlman was also close to Marion Roaman Weil, who owns Zone Hampton, a workout studio in East Hampton. Last year, Ms. Kohlman had photography exhibits at East End Books in East Hampton and at the Fireplace Project in Springs. Mr. Obenhaus said that his wife was "avidly appreciative of Accabonac Harbor . . . it's just her body of water. We just spent the better parts of all of these summers either kayaking, swimming, or clamming" there. The couple were designing their "dream house" in Springs, where she "hoped to spend the rest of her life." Although Ms. Kohlman was born in Teaneck N.J., her father, who had attended summer camp in Springs as a youth, also had fond memories of the area. When he died, his ashes were spread over Accabonac Harbor. It was Ms. Kohlman's wish to have her ashes spread there as well, and her family and friends plan to do so in a private ceremony at a later date. Although Ms. Kohlman had photographed many celebrities, including Keith Richards and Calvin Klein, it didn't stop her from being a "groupie," her husband said, of Neil Young's. When she was approaching 60, she met the singer backstage at a Madison Square Garden concert shortly after she was diagnosed with cancer, and he told her, "Lynn, have a wonderful journey." Her husband said "she was terribly moved by it," and despite a grim prognosis that suggested she would survive only a few months longer, "she lived five years. She survived way longer than anyone expected her to." Shortly after graduating summa cum laude from Oberlin College, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, with a bachelor's degree in art history, Ms. Kohlman moved to Florence, Italy, to restore paintings. Despite the fact that she never wore makeup, Ms. Kohlman happened into modeling — she had done some in college — and after being squarely rejected by Eileen Ford for looking too "eccentric," she was quickly picked up by Wilhelmina, another top modeling agency. Over the next decade her image graced the covers of Elle, Italian Vogue, and Harper's magazine. Living in London in the 1970s, she developed a chic, boyish, and edgy personal style. She became known as the muse to Perry Ellis, who gave her a job as assistant designer, despite the fact that she didn't know how to sketch or sew. He once created an entire collection based on Ms. Kohlman's own oversized pantsuit and white jacket. In the 1980s, she turned to photography, and found that she enjoyed shooting male subjects. When Donna Karan struck out on her own in 1988, she appointed Ms. Kohlman fashion director, and much of the line's androgynous, urban "attitude" has been attributed to Ms. Kohlman's influence.In 2001, Ms. Kohlman left Donna Karan to help Tommy Hilfiger start his first women's fashion line. Shortly afterward, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy, only to find out a few months later, while on a yoga retreat, that she had brain cancer. After that, Ms. Kohlman became outspoken about her cancer. In her book, she published a post-operation topless photo of herself, complete with a fresh line of staples in her half-shorn head, next to a nude photograph from her modeling days. Ms. Kohlman was born on Aug. 12, 1946, to Clement Kohlman and the former Eleanor Lerner. She grew up in Teaneck and met her current husband at college. A first marriage ended in divorce. She married Mr. Obenhaus on Feb. 5, 1985. The couple had one son together, Sam Obenhaus of New York City. She is also survived by a brother, Jeffrey Kohlman of Atlanta. Memorial contributions were suggested to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Neuro-Oncology Research Fund, 1275 York Ave., New York 10021. Source: The East Hampton Star. *Lynn Kohlman, 62, Model and Muse, Dies. The cause was brain cancer, said her husband, Mark Obenhaus. Ms. Kohlman also worked as a design executive for Mr. Ellis and other fashion houses and later as a photographer. Her personal style was tough and creative. She wore her hair short and her suits oversize, often paired with motorcycle boots. It was her offbeat style that attracted the attention of Mr. Ellis in the 1970s, and he often described her as a muse. Mr. Ellis once designed an entire collection based on an oversize white linen jacket Ms. Kohlman had worn and, as usual, she was the first model sent out onto the runway at that show. He gave her a position as an assistant designer at his company, even though she said she could not sketch or sew. Ms. Kohlman also appeared on the covers of Vogue and Elle and in advertisements for Yves Saint Laurent and Anne Klein, where Ms. Karan became the designer after Ms. Klein’s death in 1974. Ms. Karan, after starting her own company, hired Ms. Kohlman as the fashion director of DKNY, when her less expensive collection was started in 1988, to give the clothes a fresh sense of urban toughness and a masculine/feminine blend. Ms. Kohlman also later helped Tommy Hilfiger start his first women’s collection. “All of those iconic things about DKNY were because of her look,” Ms. Karan said. “She was the Patti Smith of fashion.” Ms. Kohlman wrote about her experience with breast cancer and brain cancer in a 2005 autobiography called “Lynn Front to Back.” The title referred to her career transition from being a model in front of the cameras to the person taking the pictures, but also to her acceptance of her post-surgery body, as she had always been proud of her figure. The book opened with two arresting images of Ms. Kohlman, shown before and after a mastectomy and a separate operation to remove a walnut-size brain tumor that left 39 visible titanium staples in her scalp, which she said she had chosen to show that her body was more beautiful than ever. Lynn Eleanor Kohlman was born on Aug. 12, 1946, in Teaneck, N.J. After studying art history at Oberlin College, she moved to Florence, Italy, to help restore artworks damaged in the Arno River flood of 1966. But Ms. Kohlman, who had modeled during college, was soon discovered by Wilhelmina Models and got her first assignment, for The New York Times Magazine, around 1970. She also loved photography, and her casual portraits of Calvin Klein, Keith Richards and Stephan Weiss, Ms. Karan’s husband, were published in magazines including Interview, Vogue and GQ. In addition to her husband, Mr. Obenhaus, a producer and director of documentaries, Ms. Kohlman is survived by a son, Sam, who also modeled in advertisements for DKNY, and a brother, Jeff Kohlman, a federal judge in Atlanta. After her breast cancer was discovered in 2002 and then an aggressive form of brain cancer was found the following year, Ms. Kohlman said she was determined not to hide behind her scars. On “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” she described walking in the East Village and receiving compliments from a body piercing fan because her staples were “really nicely spaced and even.” She gave him the name of her doctor. Source: New York Times. *Lynn Kohlman. American model who defied convention by displaying the ravages of cancer. By Veronica Horwell. The American fashion director and former model Lynn Kohlman, who has died of cancer aged 62, presented herself as the beautiful public body of cancer. She posed for the camera unclothed with both breasts gone, with titanium staples encircling her scalp after a brain operation, with hair frazzled away by radiation. In a radical gesture consistent with her life, she published proximate portraits of her youthful perfection and post-op, scarred self, defiantly lovely, in her autobiography, Lynn Front to Back, published in 2005. Kohlman had modelled in her student years after the photographer Clive Arrowsmith spotted her on a London street. Then, as a graduate in art history, she moved from her native New Jersey to Italy to do restoration work after the Florence floods of 1966. She thought modelling was "inane", but it paid, and her looks were liked in Europe in the 1970s - her short, dark hair so different from the prevaling taste for curly girlies, her long, lean face harking back to a pre-60s sophistication, though not clarted with makeup. She was a cover girl for Elle, Harpers & Queen, and French Vogue, and she twirled on Paris and London catwalks, lanky enough to carry off the acres of fabric in a Zandra Rhodes ensemble. She travelled to Africa and India, and learned how the photographers Barry Lategan, Irving Penn and Richard Avedon worked. Photography became Kohlman's back-up career after she returned to New York in the early 1980s. The model agency boss Eileen Ford told her she would need a nose job before she was acceptable for modelling assignments in the US. And the crew cut, motorbike boots and Patti Smith style would have to go. She did have American fans, notably the designer Perry Ellis, who produced a collection based on the oversized man's linen suit she wore. Kohlman wrote that she thought of herself "as his muse, but he gave me the title assistant designer", and she led the parade at his shows. She shot ads for, and portraits of, him and Calvin Klein. Andy Warhol rated her portfolio highly enough to offer her space in Interview magazine, and Vogue commissioned her behind the camera. Besides fashion and portraits, she photographed landscapes. Donna Karan employed her in 1988, first as fashion director, then as creative director, and always as inspiration. Kohlman's edginess and "masculine-feminine street feeling" became a basis of Karan's urban DKNY look. Then, after 11 years with Karan, she was recruited by Tommy Hilfiger as creative director, but was swiftly dismissed. Despite an initial encounter with breast cancer in the 1990s, which required a lumpectomy, she remained fit until 2002. Then, that September, Kohlman asked a friend to practise spiritual healing on her son, Sam, and the friend warned Kohlman to check her breasts, as she was sure something was wrong. It was. Kohlman had cancer widespread enough to demand an immediate double mastectomy - as her mother had 30 years earlier. Kohlman enjoyed telling the story of her operations and their aftermath as outrageous comedy. She had expected to qualify for a new technology that created replacement "breasts" from her own body fat, only she lacked enough fat for one breast, let alone two. "I was very baffled that I could be too fit or too thin." A reconstructive surgeon inserted "expanders" in her chest to stretch skin and muscles slowly so implants could be fitted. But after an infection, she had them extracted. At the end of a yoga class five months later, as she wrote in Vogue: "It was as if hot snakes were wriggling through me ... my mouth tasted like metal." The class master claimed this was the joyful release of "kundalini rising", but she knew it was brain cancer. The precise diagnosis turned out to be stage four glioblastoma. "Stage four out of 10, I asked? No, the doctor shook her head. Stage four out of four." Kohlman had to stay awake during the surgery to answer questions so the surgeons could be sure they were within the correct zone of the brain. Then they sealed her skull incision with 39 titanium staples. The tumour regrew in weeks; more chemotherapy, but no hiding. She was proud that she was shameless in what others thought of as her physical ruin. Karan considered the staples elegant and edgy, and so did Kohlman. As she told the Oprah Winfrey show in 2005, she had sauntered out onto the streets of New York with her scalp shaved and staples visible. A passing pierced punk admired them, so "nicely spaced and even. That's cool. Where'd you have that done?" Kohlman's first marriage ended in divorce. She is survived by her second husband, the documentary director Mark Obenhaus, and their son. Lynn Eleanor Kohlman, model and fashion director, born August 12 1946; died September 14 2008. Source: The Guardian; Wednesday 24 September 2008. *Model-Photographer Lynn Kohlman, 62. By Dianne M. Pogoda. New York. Lynn Kohlman, a model and photographer who also served as Perry Ellis' muse and in creative roles for Donna Karan and Tommy Hilfiger, died Sunday morning at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center here. Kohlman, who was 62, had been battling breast and brain cancer for more than five years. "Lynn was edge," said Karan on Sunday. "She was the first model I ever used at Anne Klein, after Anne passed away that's how I met her. We remained great friends. She was the fashion director for DKNY, and she set the tone for Urban Zen. She was my inspiration." Karan wrote the foreword for and produced a book with Assouline about Kohlman's life, "Lynn Front to Back," a frank autobiography chronicling the model's years in front of and behind the camera, her roles at fashion houses and her health struggles. Karan and Kohlman appeared together on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to discuss the book and how to survive various situations. Kohlman's fashion career began in the Seventies. After being rejected by Eileen Ford of Ford Models as being "too eccentric looking," she was picked up by the Wilhelmina agency and modeled for numerous European fashion houses, including Yves Saint Laurent, Ossie Clark, Zandra Rhodes and Bill Gibb, as well as publications such as Vogue, Vogue Italia, Harper's Bazaar, Harpers & Queen, Mademoiselle and Elle. Perry Ellis called her for a go-see, the two hit it off, and he asked her to collaborate with him. As she wrote in her book, she was wearing a white oversize linen suit when they met, and Ellis did a whole show around that suit, in which everything was oversize. She modeled for him for years, but in the Eighties realized her modeling career was drawing to an end and Ellis encouraged her to pursue photography professionally, according to the book. Karan said Kohlman "loved fashion, music, photography and whitewater rafting. One of her goals was to take a photo every day." She photographed numerous celebrities and fashion figures, including Karan and her family, Ellis, Calvin Klein, Patty Hansen and Keith Richards, Jeffrey Banks, Peter Lindbergh, former NFL quarterback Joe Theisman and Fran Lebowitz. She came to the attention of Andy Warhol, and shot for his Interview magazine. "The iconic DKNY looks the masculine-feminine, the sporty looks that was Lynn's style. She brought that to us and to Perry Ellis." Donna Karan. "It seemed as though photography was always a part of her life, on both sides of the camera," said Ingrid Sischy, a contributing editor for American Vanity Fair and international editor for its European editions and a former editor in chief of Interview, "perhaps most hauntingly when she got sick she was very daring with her camera. She was a model of someone who wanted to lift the veil on this kind of suffering. It's stunning, the way you see her journey, from the early days to the last days." Kohlman's portfolio also included dramatic landscapes shot on wilderness treks and rafting trips to places like the Arctic Circle and British Columbia. In 1988, Kohlman joined Donna Karan International and became a vice president and corporate creative director, where she spent 11 years and was instrumental in the development and evolution of DKNY. "The iconic DKNY looks the masculine-feminine, the sporty looks that was Lynn's style," Karan said. "She brought that to us and to Perry. Just before she died, we brought the spring collection to show her in the hospital, and she was very specific about what she liked, and gave us a thumbs-up." After DKNY, Kohlman spent a year from 2000 to 2001 as executive vice president and global creative director of women's at Tommy Hilfiger to implement corporate consistency across all women's categories and product lines. Julie Gilhart, senior vice president and fashion director of Barneys New York, met Kohlman at a yoga retreat many years ago. "She was amazing, charismatic and full of energy," Gilhart recalled. "She knew the fashion business so well, having done so many campaigns with great designers. She always had style and was happy every day because she was alive. Even though she made her career as a model, she taught me that beauty is a facade. And even though her body had been ravaged by the cancer, which took away what we typically think of as beauty, her beauty came from the inside. "Kohlman graduated summa cum laude from Oberlin College with a degree in art history, and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She met her husband of 25 years, Mark Obenhaus, a documentary film producer and director, while they were Oberlin students. "She was the model for a set of photographs of the typical type of woman who would be at Oberlin," Obenhaus recalled Sunday. "We knew each other, but re-met years later through a mutual friend, which is when we got together." Kohlman is also survived by their son, Sam. "The life expectancy for people with Lynn's type of cancer is usually months," Obenhaus said, "but she survived five years and a few months and was able to see Sam graduate from Colgate this spring." Source: Women's Wear Daily. *Fashion model, photographer Lynn Kohlman dead at 62. By Mary Rourke. Los Angeles Times. Lynn Kohlman a fashion model and photographer who worked with the creative teams of top New York designers Perry Ellis, Donna Karan and Tommy Hilfiger has died. She was 62. Kohlman died Sunday of brain cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, her husband, Mark Obenhaus, said. She had been battling cancer for more than five years. Early in her careen Kohlman modeled in Europe for Yves St. Laurent, Kenzo and Zandra Rhodes, and she appeared in Italian Vogue, Elle and Harpers & Queen. In London, where she lived during the 1970s, she developed her personal style. Short, dark hair and a long, narrow figure gave her a "punk androgynous" look, she wrote in "Lynn: Front to Back," her 2005 memoir about her career in front of the camera and later behind the lens. She moved to New York in the early 1980s. "Lynn wasn't the typical blond-huh; blue eyed model," Karen, a longtime friend, said this week. "She had an edge." Kohlman modeled for Ellis, who asked her to become his collaborator. He once designed a collection of oversize jackets, pants and coats for women based on the men's linen pant suit Kohlman wore, several sizes too big for her "I thought of myself as his muse, but he gave me the title "assistant designer," Kohlman wrote of Ellis. As she outgrew her modeling career in the mid 1980s, she moved into photography. She had been taking pictures most of her life and had a portfolio of celebrities and fashion figures including Ellis, Karan and Calvin Klein, along with photo-graphs of her outdoor treks and river rafting trips. Her work appeared in Interview, Vogue and other magazines. She shot ads for Perry Ellis and Anne Klein IL In 1988 Kohlman became a creative director for Karan's company, where she worked for 11 years and helped to develop Karan's DKNY label. "The masculine-feminine, street feeling of DKNY was Lynn," Karan said. "She inspired me." Kohlman left Karan's company to work as a creative director at Tommy Hilfiger for about one year She was considering her next move when she learned that she had breast cancer in 2002. Less than a year later, after a double mastectomy, she developed an aggressive form of brain cancer One page in her book shows Kohlman as a young model, nude from the waist up, next to Kohlman after her double mastectomy, without breasts. She didn't hide her head scars, either. A memorial page honoring her on Karan's Web site, www.urbanzemorg, includes a photograph of Kohlman after her brain surgery. Once, when she was walking down a New York street, someone with a pierced nose and eyebrow stopped then looked at her staples and said, "That's cool, where'd you have that done?" Kohlman recalled during an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2005. She gave him her doctor's name. She talked openly and wrote about how terminal cancer changed her "I have finally realized that, at 59 years old, my breasts gone, my hair fried from radiation, a scar circling my scalp like stitches on a baseball, I am beautiful," she wrote in the August 2005 issue of Vogue magazine. Kohlman was born August 12, 1946, in Teaneck, N.J. She graduated summa cum laude from Oberlin College, where she majored in art history and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She got her first fashion assignments after she joined a modeling agency in New York. She was married twice. Her first marriage ended in divorce, Along with her husband, a documentary filmmaker, Kohlman is survived by their son, Sam; and her brother, Jeffrey, a federal judge in Atlanta. Source: Los Angeles Times. By Mary Rourke. Category:Lynn Eleanor Kohlman (1946-2008)